Thornley Gate to Haltwhistle

6 July 2011 - Thornley Gate to Haltwhistle

Distance - 15.4 miles

Weather - Mostly fine - rain on moorland!

We stayed at - Centre of Britain Hotel, Main Street, Haltwhistle, Northumberland, NE49 0BH 
Cost £90.00

Think I need a stick for this!

The larger part of today's walk was along rivers. It would have more pleasant had the paths we followed kept the same altitude as the river i.e. were largely flat. Instead we were up one steep path, then down another, then up, then down. The main offender was the River Allen, which cuts through a gorge, creating challenging paths as it does so. In fact at one point, a tiny tributary of the Allen joins in, for a while flowing in parallel with it, the result is a narrow tongue of land, with a path at the top, 40m high cliffs either side and rivers at the bottom. At the end of this tongue are the remains of fortifications. A sign suggests that you'd have to be a very determined foe to break into this fort. After walking through it, we had a very steep down followed by a steep up.

From there we climbed up through fields to Kingswood Common, where we bumped into twenty or so people walking the other way. They were taking part in the Haltwhistle walking festival and tried to spam us with one of those cards you're supposed to keep in your wallet. When they heard what we were doing, they tried to interest us in a 'challenge' walk they were organising, which admittedly sounded a real challenge. We have our own challenge though.

Can you see the path?

Their tracks made the next bit easier, as we began to fight through long

Much easier!

grass and bog over terrain where tracks tended to be invented by sheep. It got worse, their tracks vanished and the rain appeared.

We came, at one point, across a good, mapped, track heading at right angles to ours. We could see it landed on a road which took us straight to Haltwhistle, so we took it and exited the moor pronto. It probably added a kilometre to our walk, but saved us an hour's time and a huge effort.

  

The final bit into Haltwhistle was an interesting crossing of the very busy A69. Is there an underpass? A bridge? Perhaps a safety island? Nope. You have to wait for a break int the traffic and go for it. Handily there was a bench the other side of the road. We weren't certain why it was put there. Maybe it was to allow people who had just crossed the road north somewhere to stop and catch their breath. Or maybe somewhere for people heading south to wait for a break in traffic. And possibly contemplate it wasn't worth the bother.

We stayed at the Centre of Britain hotel. Haltwhistle claims, via various criteria, to be the centre of Britain. Allandale Town has a similar claim, I suspect using slightly different criteria. The walking group members had asked where we were staying and said it was posh, and their dinners were good. In fact compared to the places we stayed in the Dales, it was good value, especially since we found we had a suite. The dinner was good and huge with it.